


shattered

by orphan_account



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Canon Compliant, Crying, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Sad Ending, all of it is sad, pretty much compliant with any au so take this as you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 03:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12379791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Heather Chandler died three days ago.Heather Duke put on a brave face and took on the role of Queen of Westerburg, trying to convince herself that nothing would be different with her best friend gone.Heather McNamara genuinely hoped she would be in the solitude of her bedroom, or at least behind the door of a locked bathroom stall, before she collapsed into a fit of tears.She didn’t make it that far.





	shattered

"Hey," Heather Duke greeted Heather McNamara, seeing the yellow-clad girl already standing outside Duke's car. McNamara's bag was unzipped and hanging limply over one shoulder, and she stood, leaning against the side of the car. Her head hung low.

"I said hey, you asshole." Duke joked, bearing a small smile. It was immediately wiped away when she took a few steps closer to McNamara and saw the look on her face. She was crying. She was staring at the ground, blinking back tears.

"...Heather?" She whispered, trying to get her friend to show any sign of being okay. When she showed nothing, all Duke could think to do was pull her into a hug.

Nobody at Westerburg knew the Heathers to be affectionate people. So, when the two remaining Heathers stood in an empty parking space outside the school, one of them crying silently on the other's shoulder, people pointed, stared, whispered... but it didn't matter anymore. Heather Duke just had to know what was wrong with Heather McNamara. She didn't care about her image in that moment.

They embraced. The world fell silent and unmoving. The quiet seemed to stretch into the deepest infinities either of them could ever imagine. Silence leaves one to be alone with her thoughts. The silence made both girls increasingly more upset by the second, and despite their wishes, the world was still.

And then it was filled with the violent shaking of Heather McNamara's shoulders. And makeup running down her cheeks as she tried furiously to wipe it away with the back of her hand. And the sounds of sobbing. Unceasing, pained, choked-back whimpers. The sound itself made Heather Duke afraid.

"Jesus!" she sputtered, her voice revealing her concern. "Are you alright?"

McNamara gave two sharp, strangled inhales and looked up at Duke, struggling not to choke on the grief that she felt building up in her throat. Duke half-expected her friend to go off on a tangent about her shitty ex-boyfriend or something. At least, that's what she wanted to believe. But, even though she had managed to convince herself that life would be no different without having Heather Chandler here to pester her, she knew it wasn't true. She knew that her best friend's suicide was the one thing eating away at both her and the crying girl in front of her.

"I miss her," Heather McNamara choked, her voice breaking. It only took a moment before her eyes welled up with tears and she collapsed onto her friend's shoulder again, holding her tighter than before as she trembled, succumbing to another wave of emotion. "I haven't slept in d-days..."

Heather Duke didn't know what to do. She looked down at the red scrunchie wrapped around her wrist, and everything fell into place. She missed Chandler, too. Just as badly as her friend did, though she'd never show it.

She felt her green blazer slowly being stained with tears and running mascara, and the feeling of Heather's body shaking against hers, no matter how tight she held her. No matter what she did, Heather continued to sob, muttering mostly incoherencies to herself. One of them, in particular, was enough for Duke to push McNamara back and wish even more that she could help her.

"It's all my fault."

Duke gasped. Pushed her away. McNamara shrunk back, violated. The dark haired Heather folded over the corner of her blazer's sleeve and wiped at the other girl's tears while whispering to her.

"This isn't your fault, okay? None of this is your fault."

For once, her breathing was quiet. She stared in astonishment at her friend's sympathy. Duke kept talking.

"I mean... yeah. You miss her. That's normal. She's your best friend. I miss her, too."

"You do? You don't act like it."

Heather Duke averted her gaze to the ground. "It's easier to hide these feelings than it is to acknowledge the reality. Plus..." she continued, "I've got a school to run. I can't show weakness."

Heather McNamara took Duke's hand and led her to sit on the curb. She looked into her friend's eyes. They were dark, and now, they were filled with the beginnings of tears.

She had never seen another Heather cry before.

"You can show whatever emotions you want,” the girl in yellow reassures her friend. “We have a right for the school to know that we miss our best friend."

Duke sighed, blinking back tears. "I just..." she began, exhaling when she couldn't find the right words. "Doesn't the school already know that we're hurting? We were her best friends," she spat. That sentence formed a lump in her throat, and left an awful taste in her mouth. It hurt Duke to acknowledge the truth. She and McNamara aren't Heather Chandler's best friends anymore. Heather Chandler is _dead._

_Heather Chandler killed herself._

"Do you think she'd be happy?" McNamara added quietly, staring at something in the distance that Duke couldn't pinpoint.

"What do you mean? She committed suicide. She probably wasn't happy."

"No, not about that," McNamara stated, dragging her sleeve across her cheek to clear away her tear tracks. "I mean, if she were looking down on Westerburg... from like, Heaven or whatever... would she be happy with how people are remembering her?"

"Oh, God," Duke muttered. "I wouldn't know." She felt tears welling up in her eyes again, and knew it was too late to stop them from falling.

"Nobody at this school really knew Heather," Duke confessed, her words becoming increasingly more strangled as tears fell down her cheeks, guilt causing words to catch in her throat. "We were the only people who really knew who she was... on the inside. And even now... I don't know if this would make her happy. Seeing this many people feeling like shit because she's gone."

McNamara gave a heartbroken half-smile, trying to trick herself into thinking she wasn't one of the people Duke just referenced. The people feeling like shit because Chandler is gone. But she was. She felt hopeless, and guilty, and she felt, most of all, like she had nothing more to live for. If Duke was going to take control of Westerburg and leave her behind... what's it all for, then?

"What'd you say, Heather?"

Bloodshot blue eyes met tear-filled brown ones. Heather McNamara shook her head, not realizing she had spoken. She sheepishly tucked a blonde curl behind her ear.

"Nothing," McNamara replied, rubbing at the mascara stain from crying that was plastered on her cheek.

"No..." Duke hesitated. "You said something. You said, 'what's it all for, then?'. What's that supposed to mean?"

McNamara buried her head in her hands. She shook her head, almost aggressively. "I... I didn't mean to say that out loud. Forget it, okay?"

And the world went still again, just like it had before.

Within seconds, one word shattered the silence, shards of the world they knew crashing to the ground around the two girls. All because Heather Duke didn't believe her friend when she said she was fine. She knew it to be a cry for help.

So her one word shattered the silence.

"No."

Blue eyes met brown again, and this time, the blue eyes were the ones filled with tears.

A weak voice, Heather McNamara’s voice, stuttered, "What do you mean, no?"

Heather, the one in green, took her friend's hand and held it tightly. The yellow Heather, the one who always seemed to emit light and joy and sunshine... her hands were freezing cold.

"I mean, I can't pretend you didn't say that. You have to tell me what's going on. Tell me everything."

McNamara gave Duke a questioning look.

Duke squeezed McNamara's hand. She breathed. Heather breathed. Silence.

"Swear you'll tell me the truth?"

The blonde girl nodded.

"Have you tried to kill yourself?"

Silence, again. McNamara's heart was pounding in her ears. The heat in her eyes, the hot tears, warmth growing and making her feel useless, it was already building up. She stammered. Duke cut her off.

"No. I don't want to hear some crap about how you're fine, Mac," the girl in green snapped. She regained her composure, her emotions reading through her eyes. She asked the question again, slower this time. "Have you tried to kill yourself?"

And then Heather McNamara shattered.

She crumpled up in Duke's lap, shaking and sobbing and wishing she had never done anything wrong, because she knew that maybe, if she hadn't attempted suicide, Heather wouldn't have, either.

It was all her fault Heather Chandler was gone. It was all her fault Heather Duke hadn't eaten in days. It was all her fault Westerburg was falling apart at the seams.

But Duke couldn't read McNamara's mind. All Duke could see was Heather McNamara's head laying on her skirt, her hands tangled in her hair as she choked and trembled and sobbed.

"Heather?" Duke whispered, shaking the smaller girl lightly. "Heather... talk to me." Her voice broke. The black-haired girl wouldn't dare admit it, but she was scared for her friend. She was scared that one day, she would get a call telling her that Heather McNamara died in her sleep, and that the police found a half-full bottle of sleeping pills in the hand of her dead body.

The blonde slowly sat up, her hands shaking and strands of hair falling out of her perfect curls. Her makeup was missing in streaks along her face, left there from her tear tracks. Her breathing was uneven, labored, heaving.

Exactly how it sounded three days ago when she held the handful of sleeping pills to her lips and breathed, waiting for the moment her hand decided to pour the capsules into her mouth and allow her to die slowly. Peacefully.

But she wasn't about to die. She was very much alive, and the tears that now spilled down her cheeks did everything possible to prove it.

“Please don’t cry, oh my god, I can’t stand seeing you cry,” Duke pleaded, feeling herself break again, as if she wasn’t already shattered enough.

And both of them were fragments of a greater thing. Fragments of what might have been if Duke wasn’t cowardly, if McNamara wasn’t desperate, and if Chandler wasn’t secretive.

If Duke wasn’t so lonely, if McNamara wasn’t so heartbroken, and if Chandler wasn’t so unknown.

If Duke was healthy.

If McNamara was happy.

If Chandler was _alive_.

But trying to put back the pieces of something so broken is impossible, and sometimes, it’s better to just allow your tears to land on the broken pieces and hope they can mend what has been lost.

So the Heathers cried. McNamara’s tears were nearly hysteric, as she lost control of her breathing and couldn’t stop herself from trembling like she’d found herself trapped in the cold and was so scared she’d never feel warmth again.

Which, in a way, she was.

And Duke was the opposite, her tears and her grief being much more subdued, her shaking more minute and the lapses and hitches in her breathing much rarer and subtler.

But Duke had pulled the red scrunchie from her wrist and was relishing having it in her hand, not as a symbol of power but as a memory of her _best friend_. And then, slowly, gently, she placed the red hair tie into McNamara’s hand, and as her fingers tightened around it, both of them felt something. Something unidentifiably awful, but _something_ nonetheless.

Heather McNamara took the scrunchie and clutched it tightly to her chest, desperate for some sense of closure in the useless gesture. And Heather Duke hugged McNamara tighter, feeling her tremble against her body. And they remained like that for what felt like forever, sobbing and holding each other and wishing that, one last time, they could feel Heather Chandler holding them, too.

And, maybe it was only in their minds, but the embrace grew a little warmer, and felt a little more complete.

**Author's Note:**

> you guys should definitely leave some kudos and some comments because I live for other peoples’ validation :’)  
> tysm from the bottom of my heart for reading!!


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